Murder Most Merry (10 page)

So even as Bridget O’Dowd was giving her Virgin Mary at the comprehensive, the rest of the family was waiting to give evidence against Eddie Timson in that home of British drama, Number One Court at the Old Bailey.

“I never had no cutter, Mr. Rumpole. Straight up, I never had one,” the defendant told me in the cells. He was an appealing-looking lad with soft brown eyes, who had already won the heart of the highly susceptible lady who wrote his social inquiry report. (“Although the charge is a serious one, this is a young man who might respond well to a period of probation.” I could imagine the steely contempt in Mr. Justice Vosper’s eye when he read that. )

“Well, tell me. Edward. Who had?”

“I never seen no cutters on no one. honest I didn’t. We wasn’t none of us tooled up, Mr. Rumpole.”

“Come on, Eddie. Someone must have been. They say even young Noreen was brandishing a potato peeler.”

“Not me, honest.”

“What about your sword?”

There was one part of the prosecution evidence that I found particularly distasteful. It was agreed that on the previous Sunday morning, Eddie “Turpin” Timson had appeared on the stairs of Keir Hardie Court and flourished what appeared to be an antique cavalry saber at the assembled O’Dowds, who were just popping out to Mass.

“Me sword I bought up the Portobello? I didn’t have that there, honest.”

“The prosecution can’t introduce evidence about the sword. It was an entirely different occasion.” Mr. Barnard, my instructing solicitor who fancied himself as an infallible lawyer, spoke with a confidence which I couldn’t feel. He, after all, wouldn’t have to stand up on his hind legs and argue the legal toss with Mr. Justice Vosper.

“It rather depends on who’s prosecuting us. I mean, if it’s some fairly reasonable fellow—”

“I think,” Mr. Barnard reminded me, shattering my faint optimism and ensuring that we were all in for a very rough Christmas indeed, “I think it’s Mr. Wrigglesworth. Will he try to introduce the sword?”

I looked at “Turpin” Timson with a kind of pity. “If it is the Mad Monk, he undoubtedly will.”

When I went into Court, Basil Wrigglesworth was standing with his shoulders hunched up round his large, red ears, his gown dropped to his elbows, his bony wrists protruding from the sleeves of his frayed jacket, his wig pushed back, and his huge hands joined on his lectern in what seemed to be an attitude of devoted prayer. A lump of cotton wool clung to his chin where he had cut himself shaving. Although well into his sixties, he preserved a look of boyish clumsiness. He appeared, as he always did when about to prosecute on a charge carrying a major punishment, radiantly happy.

“Ah, Rumpole,” he said, lifting his eyes from the police verbals as though they were his breviary. “Are you defending
as usual?”

“Yes, Wrigglesworth. And you’re prosecuting
as usual?”
It wasn’t much of a riposte but it was all I could think of at the time.

“Of course, I don’t defend. One doesn’t like to call witnesses who may not be telling the truth.”

“You must have a few unhappy moments then, calling certain members of the Constabulary.”

“I can honestly tell you, Rumpole—” his curiously innocent blue eyes looked at me with a sort of pain, as though I had questioned the doctrine of the immaculate conception “—I have never called a dishonest policeman.”

“Yours must be a singularly simple faith. Wrigglesworth.”

“As for the Detective Inspector in this case,” counsel for the prosecution went on, “I’ve known Wainwright for years. In fact, this is his last trial before he retires. He could no more invent a verbal against a defendant than fly.”

Any more on that tack. I thought, and we should soon be debating how many angels could dance on the point of a pin.

“Look here, Wrigglesworth. That evidence about my client having a sword: it’s quite irrelevant. I’m sure you’d agree.”

“Why is it irrelevant?” Wrigglesworth frowned.

“Because the murder clearly wasn’t done with an antique cavalry saber. It was done with a small, thin blade.”

“If he’s a man who carries weapons, why isn’t that relevant?”

“A man? Why do you call him a man? He’s a child. A boy of seventeen!”

“Man enough to commit a serious crime.”

“
If
he did.”

“If he didn’t, he’d hardly be in the dock.”

“That’s the difference between us. Wrigglesworth.” I told him. “I believe in the presumption of innocence. You believe in original sin. Look here, old darling.” I tried to give the Mad Monk a smile of friendship and became conscious of the fact that it looked, no doubt, like an ingratiating sneer. “Give us a chance. You won’t introduce the evidence of the sword, will you?”

“Why ever not?”

“Well,” I told him. “the Timsons are an industrious family of criminals. They work hard, they never go on strike. If it weren’t for people like the Timsons, you and I would be out of a job.”

“They sound in great need of prosecution and punishment. Why shouldn’t I tell the jury about your client’s sword? Can you give me one good reason?”

“Yes,” I said, as convincingly as possible.

“What is it?” He peered at me. I thought, unfairly.

“Well, after all,” I said, doing my best, “it is Christmas.”

It would be idle to pretend that the first day in Court went well, although Wrigglesworth restrained himself from mentioning the sword in his opening speech, and told me that he was considering whether or not to call evidence about it the next day. I cross-examined a few members of the clan O’Dowd on the presence of lethal articles in the hands of the attacking force. The evidence about this varied, and weapons came and went in the hands of the inhabitants of Number Twelve as the witnesses were blown hither and thither in the winds of Rumpole’s cross-examination. An interested observer from one of the other flats spoke of having seen a machete.

“Could that terrible weapon have been in the hands of Mr. Kevin O’Dowd, the deceased in this case?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But can you rule out the possibility?”

“No, I can’t rule it out,” the witness admitted, to my temporary delight.

“You can never rule out the possibility of anything in this world, Mr. Rumpole. But he doesn’t think so. You have your answer.”

Mr. Justice Vosper, in a voice like a splintering iceberg, gave me this unwelcome Christmas present. The case wasn’t going well, but at least, by the end of the first day, the Mad Monk had kept out all mention of the sword. The next day he was to call young Bridget O’Dowd, fresh from her triumph in the Nativity play.

“I say, Rumpole, I’d be so grateful for a little help.”

I was in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar. drowning the sorrows of the day in my usual bottle of the cheapest Chateau Fleet Street (made from grapes which, judging from the bouquet, might have been not so much trodden as kicked to death by sturdy peasants in gum boots) when I looked up to see Wrigglesworth, dressed in an old mackintosh, doing business with Jack Pommeroy at the sales counter. When I crossed to him, he was not buying the jumbo-sized bottle of ginger beer which I imagined might be his celebratory Christmas tipple, but a tempting and respectably aged bottle of Chateau Pichon Longueville.

“What can I do for you. Wrigglesworth?”

“Well, as you know, Rumpole, I live in Croydon.”

“Happiness is given to few of us on this earth,” I said piously.

“And the Anglican Sisters of St. Agnes, Croydon, are anxious to buy a present for their Bishop,” Wrigglesworth explained. “A dozen bottles for Christmas. They’ve asked my advice, Rumpole. I know so little about wine. You wouldn’t care to try this for me? I mean, if you’re not especially busy.”

“I should be hurrying home to dinner.” My wife, Hilda (She Who Must Be Obeyed), was laying on rissoles and frozen peas, washed down by my last bottle of Pommeroy’s extremely ordinary. “However, as it’s Christmas, I don’t mind helping you out, Wrigglesworth.”

The Mad Monk was clearly quite unused to wine. As we sampled the claret together, I saw the chance of getting him to commit himself on the vital question of the evidence of the sword, as well as absorbing an unusually decent bottle. After the Pichon Longueville I was kind enough to help him by sampling a Boyd-Cantenac and then I said, “Excellent, this. But of course the Bishop might be a burgundy man. The nuns might care to invest in a decent Macon.”

“Shall we try a bottle?” Wrigglesworth suggested. “I’d be grateful for your advice.”

“I’ll do my best to help you, my old darling. And while we’re on the subject, that ridiculous bit of evidence about young Timson and the sword—”

“I remember you saying I shouldn’t bring that out because it’s Christmas.”

“Exactly.” Jack Pommeroy had uncorked the Macon and it was mingling with the claret to produce a feeling of peace and goodwill towards men. Wrigglesworth frowned, as though trying to absorb an obscure point of theology.

“I don’t quite see the relevance of Christmas to the question of your man Timson threatening his neighbors with a sword.”

“Surely. Wrigglesworth—” I knew my prosecutor well”—you’re of a religious disposition?” The Mad Monk was the product of some bleak northern Catholic boarding school. He lived alone, and no doubt wore a hair shirt under his black waistcoat and was vowed to celibacy. The fact that he had his nose deep into a glass of burgundy at the moment was due to the benign influence of Rumpole.

“I’m a Christian, yes.”

“Then practice a little Christian tolerance.”

“Tolerance towards evil?”

“Evil?” I asked. “What do you mean, evil?

“Couldn’t that be your trouble. Rumpole? That you really don’t recognize evil when you see it.”

“I suppose,” I said, “evil might be locking up a seventeen-year-old during Her Majesty’s pleasure, when Her Majesty may very probably forget all about him. banging him up with a couple of hard and violent cases and their own chamber-pots for twenty-two hours a day, so he won’t come out till he’s a real, genuine, middle-aged murderer.”

“I did hear the Reverend Mother say—” Wrigglesworth was gazing vacantly at the empty Macon bottle “—that the Bishop likes his glass of port.”

“Then in the spirit of Christmas tolerance I’ll help you to sample some of Pommeroy’s Light and Tawny.”

A little later, Wrigglesworth held up his port glass in a reverent sort of fashion.

“You’re suggesting, are you, that I should make some special concession in this case because it’s Christmastime?”

“Look here, old darling.” I absorbed half my glass, relishing the gentle fruitiness and the slight tang of wood. “If you spent your whole life in that highrise hell-hole called Keir Hardie Court, if you had no fat prosecutions to occupy your attention and no prospect of any job at all, if you had no sort of occupation except war with the O’Dowds—”

“My own flat isn’t particularly comfortable. I don’t know a great deal about
your
home life, Rumpole. but you don’t seem to be in a tearing hurry to experience it.”

“Touché, Wrigglesworth, my old darling.” I ordered us a couple of refills of Pommeroy’s port to further postpone the encounter with She Who Must Be Obeyed and her rissoles.

“But we don’t have to fight to the death on the staircase,” Wrigglesworth pointed out.

“We don’t have to fight at all, Wrigglesworth.”

“As your client did.”

“As my client
may
have done. Remember the presumption of innocence.”

“This is rather funny, this is.” The prosecutor pulled back his lips to reveal strong, yellowish teeth and laughed appreciatively. “You know why your man Timson is called ‘Turpin’ ?”

“No.” I drank port uneasily, fearing an unwelcome revelation.

“Because he’s always fighting with that sword of his. He’s called after Dick Turpin, you see, who’s always dueling on television. Do you watch television, Rumpole?”

“Hardly at all.”

“I watch a great deal of television, as I’m alone rather a lot.” Wrigglesworth referred to the box as though it were a sort of penance, like fasting or flagellation. “Detective Inspector Wainwright told me about your client. Rather amusing, I thought it was. He’s retiring this Christmas.”

“My client?”

“No. D. I. Wainwright. Do you think we should settle on this port for the Bishop? Or would you like to try a glass of something else?”

“Christmas,” I told Wrigglesworth severely as we sampled the Cockburn, “is not just a material, pagan celebration. It’s not just an occasion for absorbing superior vintages, old darling. It must be a time when you try to do good, spiritual good to our enemies.”

“To your client, you mean?”

“And to me.”

“To you, Rumpole?”

“For God’s sake, Wrigglesworth!” I was conscious of the fact that my appeal was growing desperate. “I’ve had six losers in a row down the Old Bailey. Can’t I be included in any Christmas spirit that’s going around?”

“You mean, at Christmas especially it is more blessed to give than to receive?”